Hang on to Your Wallets, Bankers Are Coming After Your Cash

[LiberalArkie]

Remember those old ads showing a senior couple lounging on a warm beach, captioned “Let your money work for you”? Or the scene in Mary Poppins where young Michael is being advised to put his tuppence in the bank, so that it can compound into “all manner of private enterprise,” including “bonds, chattels, dividends, shares, shipyards, amalgamations . . . .”?

That may still work if you’re a Wall Street banker, but if you’re an ordinary saver with your money in the bank, you may soon be paying the bank to hold your funds rather than the reverse.

Four European central banks – the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank, Sweden’s Riksbank, and Denmark’s Nationalbank – have now imposed negative interest rates on the reserves they hold for commercial banks; and discussion has turned to whether it’s time to pass those costs on to consumers. The Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve are still at ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy), but several Fed officials have also begun calling for NIRP (negative rates).

The stated justification for this move is to stimulate “demand” by forcing consumers to withdraw their money and go shopping with it. When an economy is struggling, it is standard practice for a central bank to cut interest rates, making saving less attractive. This is supposed to boost spending and kick-start an economic recovery.

Snip


http://www.alternet.org/economy/hang-your-wallets-bankers-are-coming-after-your-cash

[Buzz Clik]

1. They are not "coming after your cash", but they will keep some of it if you give it to them.

[whatthehey]

2. Oh noes...if only there were ways to avoid this "theft"

Like...

Not putting money into, and taking money out of, any consumer negative interest account, which are currently hypothetical.

Christ that's too complicated! You need to be a 1%er or financial genius (neither of which I am by far) to know how to do that! Theft!! Banksters!!!

If there are no positive interest accouts available at some point in the future (I have both a 2.5 an a 1.5 with no minimum deposit and no fees for responsible use so again open to all) then there are always bonds, many of them safe to the point of at risk only at TEOTWAWKI time, and dividend stocks without a much higher risk available for a $3.95 one time transaction fee (almost certain to be waived for the first 30 or so trades) at a couple of different trading sites.